I do enjoy Elementary, and it is one of the few 'case of the week' shows that I have as a habit; I regularly think of this show when listening to people lose their mind over the few hours of Sherlock that the BBC have managed to produce (and the even fewer hours that were really good, and not lost in hype and nonsense). The previous two seasons of this show however had not been great. They still produced solid and very professional weekly episodes, but anything beyond that felt forced, half-done, and very superficial – which really limited my enjoyment of the seasons as well as feeling like big missed opportunities. I went into the start of the fifth and final season with a little hope that it would end on a high point in this regard, even though it is still just a network show – it does appear that the fifth season will most likely be its last.
The first episode set before the Christmas break do not offer hope of a really strong finish. Instead it feels much more 'safe pair of hands' – like the creators are making sure they keep their core audience, and don't do anything that would put off new viewers feeling like they can jump in here and there. As a result there is very much a focus on the case-per-week approach, with little else on top of that. Okay old characters are brought in here and there, but mostly they are plot devices and the 'previously' usually gives enough knowledge of who they are to serve the thin purpose they serve in that individual episode. Each episode is perfectly decent on its own. The characters we enjoy all do the things that we know they will, in the way that we know they will. Occasionally one of them will look down, or look happy – but any change generally is in support of a particular direction for the show – so it is only ever a device, not something more grounded or of more consequence. The cases are still enjoyable, but there isn't a sense of something developing or building.
The introduction of Shinwell is the 'thread', but in these first ten episodes it is not particularly compelling. Only the episode wholly focused on him makes good use of this thread, otherwise it is just hanging around like it needs to be there. I would hope that the second half of the season can produce something more from this, or bring in a much stronger and more urgent core – but nothing about this first half of the season suggests that this is on the agenda for the makers. It continues to be very professional, very well made, have all the money up on the screen, and all of that – but it continues to leave me feeling like it is content to do what it is doing each week until the network tells it to stop, at which point everyone will pack up, upset at the loss of a job perhaps, but certainly not upset that they had such great stories to tell.
The first episode set before the Christmas break do not offer hope of a really strong finish. Instead it feels much more 'safe pair of hands' – like the creators are making sure they keep their core audience, and don't do anything that would put off new viewers feeling like they can jump in here and there. As a result there is very much a focus on the case-per-week approach, with little else on top of that. Okay old characters are brought in here and there, but mostly they are plot devices and the 'previously' usually gives enough knowledge of who they are to serve the thin purpose they serve in that individual episode. Each episode is perfectly decent on its own. The characters we enjoy all do the things that we know they will, in the way that we know they will. Occasionally one of them will look down, or look happy – but any change generally is in support of a particular direction for the show – so it is only ever a device, not something more grounded or of more consequence. The cases are still enjoyable, but there isn't a sense of something developing or building.
The introduction of Shinwell is the 'thread', but in these first ten episodes it is not particularly compelling. Only the episode wholly focused on him makes good use of this thread, otherwise it is just hanging around like it needs to be there. I would hope that the second half of the season can produce something more from this, or bring in a much stronger and more urgent core – but nothing about this first half of the season suggests that this is on the agenda for the makers. It continues to be very professional, very well made, have all the money up on the screen, and all of that – but it continues to leave me feeling like it is content to do what it is doing each week until the network tells it to stop, at which point everyone will pack up, upset at the loss of a job perhaps, but certainly not upset that they had such great stories to tell.
